MRS. BUSH: Thank you so much, very much, Ambassador. I appreciate
it very much. And thank you, Director General Matsuura, for everything
you do for education worldwide, and all the other focus issues of
UNESCO. I really appreciate it.

I also want to recognize Assistant Director General Smith, and
thank you very much for bringing this roundtable together.

Thanks also to each one of you who have agreed to participate in
the roundtable, and who work all the time to make sure children and
adults are educated worldwide.

And this also gives me the opportunity to recognize each of the
observers, all of you who represent other UNESCO countries. Thank you
so much for joining us today and for working with all of us to make sure
children and adults everywhere learn to read.

Three years ago, UNESCO launched its Decade of Literacy, a 10-year
initiative to extend the benefits of reading everywhere, to every corner
of the world, and especially to the world's neediest communities. DG
Matsuura mentioned more than 800 million people worldwide are
illiterate; 77 million children worldwide are not in school. And of the
781 million adults who cannot read a simple book, more than two-thirds
of them are women.

Ending illiteracy is a challenge for every country, yet investing
in literacy and education helps governments meet their other fundamental
requirements, improves opportunities for children and families, it
strengthens economies, and it helps keep their citizens in good health.

Literacy instruction requires textbooks and teachers. And one of
the things we're going to talk about today is a way that we can make
sure teachers are trained around the world.

In Ghana, I visited the Accra Teacher Training Center, which
participates in the Textbooks and Learning Materials Program. As part
of the program, six American universities are partnered with six
countries in Africa, six African governments, to produce and distribute
15 million primary school textbooks for African children. The program
is part of President Bush's African Education Initiative, and it's a
$600 million commitment that will help train more than 900,000 teachers
in sub-Saharan Africa by 2010.

In Kabul, I visited the Teacher Training Institute, which was
established through a partnership between the government of Afghanistan
and USAID. At the institute, women have a safe dorm to live in when
they come in from the provinces to be trained as teachers. Then they go
home and they train more teachers in a cascading effect with the purpose
of opening and staffing as many schools as possible.

In New York, as DG Matsuura mentioned, our government partnered
with UNESCO to host the White House Conference on Global Literacy. The
conference brought together 30 first ladies from around the world, and
39 education ministers, representative from 67 nations, and nine
panelists who spoke about literacy and programs that are working and
transforming lives in each of their countries.

Thank you to UNESCO for your work on the upcoming regional
conferences, which will build on the success of the White House
conference.

Today I'm looking forward to hearing from each of you about
literacy programs that are working in your countries, and I'm excited to
hear your thoughts on what all of us can do to promote education for
children and adults worldwide.

Thank you all very much. Thank you for joining me for the
roundtable. (Applause.)